Brad Anderson's The Call is an odd patchwork that starts out as a suspenseful thriller but lurches into lurid exploitation-lite.

At first, it's a film about remote contact and fraught connection; it opens with images of the city as an interconnected web and the overlapping voices of people in distress, calling emergency services for help.

Halle Berry plays Jordan, an experienced 911 operator wedded to her job. One of its frustrations, we're told, is that the operators don't know what becomes of the people they make contact with. Someone else - a cop, a paramedic - takes over. Jordan is determined to see one particular case through to the end - the rescue of Casey (Abigail Breslin), who has been kidnapped at a mall and stashed in a car boot, and who spends most of the rest of the film sobbing and screaming.

Halle Berry in The Call.

She has a mobile phone with her, however, and she's able to call 911. With Jordan's encouragement she becomes more resourceful and proactive. There are some neat twists in the story as emergency services frantically try to track down the victim, Jordan learns the kidnapper is not a stranger to her and the suspense and violence escalate in fairly convincing fashion.

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But when Jordan decides to leave her post, the film dissolves into absurdity and loses all conviction. This is disappointing from Anderson, whose varied CV includes Transsiberian, The Machinist, Next Stop Wonderland and episodes of some quality TV drama.

There's no reason it couldn't have been a hybrid thriller-action-revenge movie but the filmmakers have gone about it the wrong way: The Call peters out in a flurry of garbled serial killer cliches and laughable decisions by a central character.